“American Idol” Recap: This Is Where We’d Put A Heejun / “Hey Jude” Pun If We Were Fox

In which Heejun Han momentarily forgot that the only way he’d crack the coveted top five was to emulate Sanjaya Malakar, who probably would’ve cracked the top five himself had American Idol‘s sixth season taken place in 2012. (His ponyhawk alone would have spawned enough GIFs to fill a small flash drive.) Instead, Heejun got all misty and sang about his feelings. Mistake. Sorry.

See, you do not have feelings on Idol. Feelings are what Colton and Joshua had on their respective performances, and although feelings were not their problems (Colton’s problem was singing Lifehouse, which it took me a minute to remember; Joshua’s problem was nonexistent), Jimmy Iovine the diabolical soothsayer said they were. Feelings are what suffused every note of Elise Testone’s glorious rock performance, except Idol only loves you when you’re seventeen and when you’re twenty-eight you’re deadweight. Except wait, except huh, except none of those three performers were in the bottom three, so hey! My theory on feelings is wrong! (My theories on feelings are usually wrong!)

Bah. We can go two places from here. We can talk some more about my theories on feelings, or we can talk about that bloody blasted bottom three and get a nice little segue into the superlatives. I think we both know what we’d prefer.

NOT THE WORST BOTTOM THREE EVER, BUT CLOSE: Hollie, Heejun and Skylar. The worst bottom three ever was season three: Fantasia Barrino, Latoya London and Jennifer Hudson, the three best vocalists in the competition at the time and the only three black female vocalists remaning. This bottom three wasn’t offensive, though, just confusing. How do you sing a big ballad like “Jesus, Take the Wheel” and not get votes for it? How do you sing country music as well as Skylar Laine and not get votes for it? Where did Heejun’s entire fanbase even go, and did someone just collectively drug all of Vote for the Worst? Did J. Lo’s VOTE FOR DEANDRE OR I WILL DEATH-GLARE YOU IN YOUR SLEEP outburst actually work? When did America suddenly realize that Elise was awesome and deserved votes?

Actually, that one’s explainable: Elise and Erika were probably splitting votes, which they no longer are. As for Deandre, there’s one other explanation:

CELEBRITY APPEARANCE THAT MOST CONSTITUTED A SPOILER: Eric Benet being all chummy and idolish toward Deandre Brackensick. If Deandre was being eliminated, they’d get Halle Berry to send him off. (If that happened, I would be OK with the television I was watching at the time.)

APTEST COMMENTER: anibundel, from last week: “I personally hope that Heejun finds himself a white drivers suit to wear next week with tire tracks down the center, because the bus that’s headed his way is going to be 2 tons of epic.” Yep.

PUN WE’RE ACTUALLY OK WITH: #harshtag.

ROMANITY RATING OF THE NICKI MINAJ PERF: 2/10. Roman Zolanski? More like Hot Gossip. The staging is essentially the same. If you’re not the kind of person who clicks links, the song behind that is “I Lost My Heart to a Starship Troopers,” and given that Nicki Minaj’s entire dungeon-dragon behemoth of an album does not have any tracks named for hearts or troopers, or given that any track in Roman’s empire wouldn’t quite suit Idol‘s jibe, you know what she performed. And damn it, “Starships” is growing on me. Nicki Minaj could make anything grow on me just by saying five words about it. This is a talent that could so easily be used for evil, so thank god she’s just using it for Dr. Luke.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNH61oLViBM

ROMANITY RATING OF THE SCOTT(Y) MCCREERY PERF: …

OK, LET’S SERIOUSLY TALK ABOUT THE MCCREERY THING: Scotty McCreery, who may or may not be Scott McCreery now, has aged about five years in less than one. The song is whatever; in every small town are plenty of people who get groceries or shampoo or paraphernalia on Sundays (or hey, you know, go out to lunch after church, which is a thing that every restaurant owner knows about–point is, lots is open on Sunday in small towns), or who forget or don’t bother to say grace, or who think “you can see who loves who from miles around” is a panoptical nightmare.

Also, uh, Jimmy Iovine, it probably really is a “Herculean act” to sell a bunch of records, but that’s kind of the exact opposite of what anybody on the Idol assembly line wants to hear. It’s like doing an informational interview at your favorite magazine then overhearing the sales exec talk about how every publication’s just had massive layoffs.

GREATEST MISSED POINT: The Ford music video. Hair metal is more awesome than gamification. Can Elise Testone sing some of it? Or at least the Lady Gaga version of it if that’s too hard a sell? That goes for Jessica and Hollie and Phillip (because Phillip singing hair metal is something the world needs to see) and everyone who’s been singing tissue-paper pop that you could retag in your MP3 folder as Withery Wispvoice and fool half the Internet. We want to earn our rock badge. Let us earn our rock badge. Maybe if we speak your language it’ll work.